


Like the Breaking of Glass

by burn_me_down



Series: SEAL Team Week 2020 [3]
Category: SEAL Team (TV)
Genre: Blackburn Being a Dad, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt Sonny Quinn, Hurt/Comfort, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Romance, SEAL Team Week 2020, The Breakup Never Happened, Worried Lisa Davis, unresolved injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 17:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22179598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burn_me_down/pseuds/burn_me_down
Summary: On their way back from a date, Sonny and Lisa stop to help a broken-down motorist. Lisa never sees the danger coming - but Sonny does.
Relationships: Eric Blackburn & Lisa Davis, Lisa Davis & Clay Spenser, Lisa Davis/Sonny Quinn
Series: SEAL Team Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600147
Comments: 19
Kudos: 69





	Like the Breaking of Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts used: Sonny, whump
> 
> This story is set in season 3, either pre-Savis breakup, or in an alternate universe where said breakup never occurred.
> 
> Title from _Wasteland, Baby!_ by Hozier.

The night Lisa Davis nearly loses everything starts out about as close to perfect as her life ever gets.

First she gets all dolled up: dons her nicest dress, does her hair and makeup, puts on perfume and jewelry, the works. Then Sonny shows up at her door with flowers, and his jaw drops a little when he sees her, in a way that suddenly makes her feel radiant instead of slightly ridiculous. For an instant he looks so much like a besotted teenager that it’s all Lisa can do not to drag him inside and just forget all about their reservation at the fancy restaurant.

(Later, she’ll have plenty of time to bitterly regret that she didn’t.)

She loves everything about Sonny Quinn, his gruffness and his strength and loyalty and silly superstitions and ridiculous sense of humor, but this might be what she loves best: the sweet, genuine heart he keeps so well hidden beneath that mountain of bravado.

Lisa is one of the only people on earth Sonny Quinn trusts enough to show that side of him, and it makes her fall in love with him all over again every time she sees it.

Sonny recovers quickly, replacing the soft, awed expression with a lecherous smirk. “Well damn, Ensign Davis,” he says in that laconic drawl that turns ‘damn’ into a two-syllable word. “You sure do clean up nice.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, cowboy.”

Sonny is about as dressed up as she’s ever seen him - which, granted, isn’t saying much - and he does look good. Of course, Lisa pretty much always thinks he looks good.

She takes the flowers, Sonny kisses her sweetly on the cheek and then follows it up with an exaggeratedly salacious wink that makes her laugh, and then they get in her car and head off to dinner.

It’s a bit of a drive, because of course they chose a destination far enough away to make sure there’s little chance of anyone recognizing them.

Dinner is wonderful, just the two of them sharing a sort of quiet, indulgent peace that their life rarely allows. Sonny is obviously a bit out of his depth, more comfortable on the battlefield than in a fancy restaurant, but he handles it easily, employing that good old boy charm that never fails to get a smile out of Lisa. She loves the way he sometimes uses humor strategically, playing up the ‘dumb Texan’ stereotype to defuse tension or make people underestimate him.

For all that Sonny Quinn loves to pretend he wouldn’t know an emotion if it bit him on the ass, he can be incredibly insightful. Good at figuring out what the people closest to him are going through, and what advice could maybe help them through it.

Especially with her. Lisa isn’t sure anyone in her life has ever been better at reading her than Sonny is.

Tonight isn’t for that, though. Not for work or advice or any sort of practical matter at all. Tonight is just for them, sharing space without fear or the need to be discreet.

Lisa, who agreed to drive on the way back, sips slowly at a scant glass of wine. Sonny drinks enough that he grows more openly affectionate, once reaching out to gently brush a stray eyelash off Lisa’s cheek while wearing a soft expression that makes her feel like her chest could cave in.

She doesn’t know how she could ever find a way to face life without this man. She also doesn’t know how they can possibly make this work in the long term without sacrificing the job that matters so much to both of them.

“You all right, Lisa?” Sonny asks. His drawl is soft at the edges, warm and familiar as a homemade quilt.

She smiles at him, takes another sip of wine, and says, “I’m perfect.”

That worry and confusion, it’s not for tonight. It’s for later.

All too soon, dinner ends and it’s time to head home, back to real life.

(Or maybe not just yet. Maybe Sonny will stay the night and make her breakfast in the morning. Maybe real life can wait till tomorrow afternoon.)

They’re nearing home and Lisa is thinking about that, dreaming of breakfast and what comes before it, when she spots the hazard lights flashing up ahead.

They’re on a quiet stretch of road, not much for a few miles in either direction. Lisa slows, watching as the headlights illuminate a girl sitting in the grass next to her car, face in her hands.

Sonny is already sitting up straighter, hand going down in preparation for unbuckling his seatbelt. Lisa flicks on the turn signal and pulls in to park behind the broken-down vehicle.

The girl looks up as they approach, hastily wiping at her face as she scrambles to her feet. She’s slightly built and seems very young, her face haloed by a cloud of untidy blond hair that looks almost white in the harsh glow from two sets of headlights.

“Hey, are you okay?” Lisa calls.

The girl nods. “It’s only just my tire,” she says. She’s got some kind of accent, faint and difficult to place - European maybe? Voice wobbling slightly, she continues, “But one of the lug nuts is too tight. I can’t get it off.”

“Well, that ain’t no big deal.” Sonny gives the girl a genuine, eye-crinkling smile, his tone gentle like it often is when he speaks to children. “We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

She smiles back, slight and tentative, and wipes away a stray tear with the back of her trembling hand. As Sonny drops to a crouch to inspect the problematic wheel, Lisa goes over to stand next to the girl, unable to shake the nagging sense that something more than just a flat tire is going on here.

“Hey,” she says softly. “What’s your name?”

The girl looks down, her expression partially hidden by straggling wisps of hair. “Hedda.”

“Hi, Hedda. I’m Lisa. You sure you’re okay?”

Hedda nods again, but then her face crumples. “Sorry,” she says quickly, wrapping her arms around herself with a slight shiver. “Sorry, sorry. It’s silly of me, but my father, he taught me how to change tires, and when I could not get the lug nut off, I actually tried to call him. I forgot.” She tries to smile, but with her lower lip trembling and eyes full of tears, it just makes her look even sadder. “He died a few months ago. I... I didn’t have anyone else to call.”

Lisa’s heart twists at the grief evident on the young woman’s face. She can’t possibly be older than 19 or 20, and the hollow look in her eyes reminds Lisa almost painfully of her own younger self - all alone in the world, trying desperately to make her own way, but so often feeling lost and out of place.

“We’ve got this,” Lisa assures the girl. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She means more than just this, the flat tire and the chilly night and the phone with no numbers but a dead man’s. She means life. She means, _You’ll make it. You won’t always be alone. You’ll find your family. Like I did._

Hedda nods again, shivers again. She’s dressed lightly, in jeans and a thin t-shirt, not warm enough for the weather. That’s one more small practical way Lisa knows she can help.

She heads back to her car to retrieve a sweater right around the same time Sonny, who has begun swearing quietly to himself, gives up on removing the rusted-on lug nut with the standard lug wrench. “Hey Davis,” he calls. “Wouldn’t happen to have a breaker bar, would you?”

She gives him a _who do you think I am?_ look. “Yep. It’s in the trunk.”

He grins and falls into step beside her. “Shoulda known,” he says. “It’s _you,_ after all. Best damn logistics specialist the Navy ever turned out. Never known you not to have-”

He cuts off mid-sentence, and then, before she even has time to register the lights or the sound of the rapidly approaching vehicle, he turns and shoves her as hard as he can.

Sonny is always so gentle with her that she sometimes forgets how strong he is, how much muscle is packed onto that broad frame, how small she is by comparison.

This one time he doesn’t hold back, uses all the force he can muster, and she goes _flying._ There’s a blur of spinning brightness before Lisa slams hard into the grass, her arm twisted awkwardly beneath her, head bouncing off the ground hard enough to set her ears ringing.

She hears that sound for only an instant before it’s drowned out by a tremendous crash, the shriek of metal, the sharp shatter of glass. Time stretches and slows. The cacophony seems to go on forever while Lisa, still dazed, struggles to get her hands under her and sit up.

It ends as suddenly as it began, and there’s empty quiet, interrupted only by the creaking and ticking of settling metal.

Then Hedda starts screaming, and everything snaps into focus.

Lisa doesn’t feel the dull throb in her wrist anymore. She doesn’t feel anything except horrible, bottomless calm. She climbs to her feet and walks toward the mass of crumpled metal where her destroyed car has folded together with the vehicle that hit it broadside.

Sonny saw it coming. He pushed her out of the way.

If he’s in there, between... crushed between...

No. _No._

“Hedda!” Lisa snaps over her shoulder, interrupting the muffled, near-hysterical wailing. “Call 911!”

The girl doesn’t stop crying, but she manages to make the call.

Lisa walks toward the cars in slow motion. She can’t feel her feet touching the ground, but she keeps moving forward.

The driver who hit her car apparently wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He was thrown half through the windshield, and a cursory glance reveals that he is very definitely dead.

Lisa doesn’t see any sign of Sonny, but if he’s crushed somewhere in there, they’ll have to pry the cars apart to ever find what’s left of him.

He’s not in there, though. He can’t be. Sonny Quinn is a goddamn Tier One operator who’s survived deployments and combat zones and bullets and flooded torpedo tubes and _this cannot be how it ends._ She won’t let it be. She’ll drag God out of heaven and demand he fix it.

(After that bullshit with the fire and the loss of her baby sister and what it cost her even though it _wasn’t her fault,_ God fucking _owes_ her this.)

“Sonny!” Lisa yells. That simple act of raising her voice seems to fracture the bubble of stunned calm that she’s been enveloped in, and her next inhale turns into a gagging sob. Sucking in another ragged breath, she screams, _“Sonny!”_

From somewhere in the darkness that swallows the overgrown grass a few feet into the ditch, there’s a faint groan in response.

Desperate hope rips through Lisa’s chest, briefly paralyzing her diaphragm. She scrambles forward, numb hands shaking as she pulls out her phone to use as a flashlight.

She finds Sonny lying on his back in the weeds, head lolled to the side so that she can’t see his face. His utter stillness sets fresh terror fluttering in her gut, but he isn’t dead. He can’t be dead. She heard him.

“Sonny,” she breathes, dropping to her knees at his side, knowing better than to try to lift or move him. “Oh. Sonny.”

The light from her phone shows that his eyes are closed, skin horribly pale. There’s blood flowing freely from a gash in his hairline; more blood down his shirt and shining wetly on the crushed grass at his side. When she shines the light there, she spots his twisted arm, white bone protruding above the elbow, and has to turn away and close her eyes to swallow back the surge of nausea.

Lisa wishes Trent were here, because he’d know what to do. Clay, even, or Jason. Any of them would know better than she does how to field treat these sorts of severe traumatic injuries.

Mostly, though, she just wishes this had never happened at all.

Carefully, she applies pressure to the wound at Sonny’s hairline, because it’s bleeding a _lot_ and she’s guessing that’s volume he can’t afford to lose right now. She tries to press down enough to control the bleeding without pressing too hard, because what if his skull is fractured under there? What if she makes things worse?

“You hang on, do you hear me?” Lisa’s voice trembles but holds firm, emotions mostly back under control for the moment. “Sonny, listen to me. You’re gonna be just fine. We’ve got help coming. Breathe. Just breathe, okay?”

He groans weakly, really just a faint humming sound, and his eyelids flutter a bit before going still again.

He’s still in there. He hears her. Lisa clings to that.

Hedda finds her way over to them, clutching her phone in a violently trembling hand. “I told them where we are. They said they are on their way.” A sob breaks out of her. “I’m so sorry.”

Lisa shakes her head absently. “Not your fault.”

Some far-removed part of her feels bad for the poor girl, already struggling and now faced with this as well, but Lisa doesn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with it at the moment. All she can see is Sonny, crumpled in a heap, still and bloody and broken.

He got hit because he took the time to shove her out of the way.

The absolute _jackass._

She is going to be so angry at him later. Once he’s okay. Because he will be.

Finally, the ambulance arrives and EMTs swarm over Sonny, forcing Lisa to draw back. Once they have him braced and stabilized and prepped for transport, they lift him up and start to carry him away, and panic punches Lisa right in the throat. “I’m going with him,” she insists, keeping pace. “I’m his-”

And that’s when it hits her.

What happened here, the potential fallout extends so far beyond just the man she loves being hurt.

SO1 Sonny Quinn has just gotten critically injured while he and Ensign Lisa Davis were on their way back from a date the UCMJ says they weren’t allowed to be on. And it has the potential to change their entire lives.

They could lose everything.

Thing is, Lisa already feels like she’ll lose everything if she lets Sonny out of her sight.

“I’m his _family,”_ she tells them with a sort of fierce, feral desperation. After an instant of hesitation, the EMT nods and says she can ride along as long as she stays out of the way.

Sonny is badly hurt - it doesn’t take a medical professional to see that - but he hangs on. His heart beats and he keeps breathing, and his eyelashes even flutter a few more times. Lisa talks to him, assures him that he’s not alone, orders him to fight.

When they reach the hospital and he’s finally whisked beyond her sight, her knees turn to water and she collapses into a waiting room chair, clenching her free hand in the smooth fabric of her silky dress. She looks down to find it torn and muddy at the hem, with tiny spots of blood scattered here and there.

Lisa takes a deep breath. She glances at the phone still clutched in her hand. She makes a call.

When Blackburn answers, she forces her voice steady, locks back the tears, and says, “Sir. Something’s happened. It’s Sonny.”

* * *

Eric finds Davis in the waiting room, curled in on herself a bit, staring down at her hands clenched together in her lap.

In all the years he has known the force of nature called Lisa Davis - first as a logistics specialist, then as an intel officer, and from almost day one as a friend - Eric has very rarely thought of her as small, even though physically she is. Right now she seems small, her body language so lost that it hurts to look at.

As he approaches, Eric catalogs details. The tremble in her hands, blood caked under her fingernails. The dress. The smeared makeup. The once elegant updo that’s now lopsided, leaking loose strands of hair around her downturned face.

He’s never seen Lisa this dressed up before, not in civvies.

There are puzzle pieces forming in his mind, ones he isn’t sure he wants to fit together. Eric pushes them away and sits down in the chair beside his friend. She wipes at her eyes, further spreading the smudged smokey eye makeup, and looks up at him, visibly fighting for calm.

“Lisa.” He keeps his voice soft. “You okay?”

She nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m... just a sprained wrist. Nothing major.”

“What happened?”

Her face starts to crumple, but she doesn’t let it. She steels herself, straightens her shoulders, and gives her report.

“Sonny and I were... on our way home. We spotted a motorist in distress and stopped to help. I didn’t see the other car coming, but Sonny did. He...” Her voice wavers briefly. “He pushed me out of the way. I haven’t yet been told exactly how serious his injuries are, but they looked significant.”

Eric nods. He’s worried about Sonny, of course, but that’s not the only thing gnawing at the edges of his mind. Lisa’s pause after ‘Sonny and I,’ the way she isn’t quite meeting his eyes...

Those puzzle pieces are starting to slot into place, whether he wants them to or not.

“Ensign Davis, I’m gonna ask you something, and I need you to answer me truthfully.” His tone stays gentle, but he adds an edge of authority. “Where were you and SO1 Quinn coming home from?”

Lisa’s eyes flicker away for an instant. Then she raises her gaze directly to his and says, “Dinner. Sir.”

Well, there it is. Eric’s team, his world, has suddenly shifted into something different than what he believed it was when he woke up this morning.

Fortunately, he’s got plenty of experience figuring out how to roll with the punches, adjust rapidly to fluid situations and make the best of them that he can.

“At this dinner,” he says abruptly, “how much did Sonny have to drink?”

Lisa blinks at him, expression frozen in blank confusion, but he’s her CO, so she responds anyway. “Uh, enough to be tipsy, but not drunk.”

“Too much to drive?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. I was driving.”

“All right.” Eric pats Davis’s hand and tells her calmly, “I got a few things to take care of, okay?”

She nods, dropping her gaze back to the floor.

When he comes back, she’s still sitting in the same position. Doesn’t look like she even moved while he was gone.

“Lisa. Hey.”

She glances up. He hands over the spare pair of scrubs and the hair tie he sweet talked a nurse into giving him.

“Go wash up and change into these, okay?”

Sonny’s teammates have been notified and are on their way. By the time they arrive, there shouldn’t be any visual evidence remaining that Lisa was all dressed up for a date tonight.

After a brief hesitation, she takes the scrubs and hair tie. There’s a faint wrinkle on her brow, confusion or concern.

Eric steps closer, lowers his voice. “Here’s what happened tonight. Sonny called you to pick him up because he’d been drinking too much to drive. Being his friend, you did, and the incident occurred when y’all were on your way home from the bar.”

A ripple of emotion crosses Lisa’s face, so brief he can’t read it. Voice thick, she says, “Sir, you can’t-”

“Last I checked, I’m your CO, Davis,” he says mildly. “Pretty sure I can.”

She takes a breath. “But if this ever-”

“It won’t. We’ll figure out the rest of it later, okay? Tonight you were just picking up a friend from a bar.” He reaches out, gently squeezes her shoulder. “The guys are on their way. Go get cleaned up. Mandy’s headed over to your apartment to pick up some of your own clothes.”

Chin wobbling, Lisa gives a sharp nod. Then she heads for a bathroom to do as ordered.

Bare-faced and composed, with her hair now in a slightly messy ponytail, Lisa makes it back out to the waiting room just a few minutes before Jason and Clay arrive.

They react pretty much exactly how Eric expected them to. Jason paces around like an angry bull, demanding to know how this happened. Clay, meanwhile, goes quiet and shut down as soon as he gets a good look at Davis’s expression and reads just how bad this is.

Blackburn hates to go and pile more onto Bravo Six, who is clearly already reeling, but Spenser is Sonny’s best friend and is also close to Davis. If anyone on Bravo is already aware of the knife’s edge they’re currently balancing on, Eric is betting it’s Clay.

After Ray, Trent and Brock arrive and engage in conversation with Jason and Davis, Eric pulls Spenser aside and asks him point blank, “Did you know about Sonny and Davis?”

Clay’s gaze immediately darts away. Eric can see the gears turning as Spenser mentally scrambles for the correct response.

That’s a yes, then. One more step past the point of no return.

“I suspected,” Clay finally admits, keeping his voice low.

“Does anybody else on the team?”

A slight head shake. “Not that I know of.”

It’ll come out eventually - this team is too close for it not to - but for the moment Eric wants to keep things as contained as possible.

“How’d you find out?” Clay asks softly.

Eric exhales through pursed lips. “They were on their way back from a date when this happened.”

“Shit,” Clay breathes. “What’s the plan here?”

For all that Eric was worried about putting more of a burden on him, Bravo Six actually almost looks a little better now that he has a cause. Something he might be able to _do_ besides just sitting helplessly and waiting for news on his best friend.

“Plan is, the date never happened. Davis just went to pick up Sonny from a bar because he’d been drinking too much to drive. His BAC will back that story up, if anybody checks it.” Hopefully nobody will even think to, but Blackburn knows it’s a good idea to plan for the worst.

Clay nods, then scrubs a hand over his face wearily. “Anything you need me to do?”

“Not at the moment,” Eric says. “Mandy’s on board. She’s gonna take an Uber to the bar so she can say she drove Sonny’s truck home from there.”

Mandy was Blackburn’s second call, after Jason. He made it less than a sentence into his attempt at an explanation before she interrupted, stating calmly and firmly that she would do whatever was needed. God, he loves that woman’s unshakable loyalty.

Spenser holds his gaze, steady and determined. “Let me know if that changes.”

Eric glances over Clay’s shoulder, back toward the main waiting area. “Actually, you know what? There is one thing you can do. Davis could sure use a friend right now.”

That’s all Spenser needs to hear. A minute later he’s sitting down right next to Lisa, bumping his shoulder gently up against hers, waiting till she slowly folds over and leans her head on him. They stay like that until the doctor finally comes out with news on Sonny.

Quinn’s condition is considered serious but stable. He’s surprisingly free of notable head trauma. He has four broken ribs and they had to remove his spleen, but his most significant injury from a long-term perspective is likely the shattered humerus. The ER doctor assures them that the orthopedic surgeon is excellent and will do his best, but Eric can read between the lines: a full recovery is far from guaranteed.

As bad as this is, it could be so much worse. That car only clipped Sonny. If it had hit him head on, he would be in the morgue right now, instead of still alive to even worry about the possibility of being medically retired.

Upon receiving the news that Sonny is stable and likely to survive, Lisa wobbles, her knees trying to give way. Eric catches her with an arm around her shoulders. “It’s all gonna be okay, Lisa,” he tells her.

She smiles at him with tears in her eyes. He knows this is far from over, that there will be intense conversations to be had later, probably a fair amount of yelling about stupid, reckless decisions... but he also knows he’ll never regret the choices he made tonight.

It ends up being quite a while before they get to see Sonny, and even longer before he’s actually conscious. Looking at him in the bed, a motionless mass of bandages and tubing, feels so wrong that Eric eventually has to excuse himself and go outside to get some air.

Of course that’s when the willful, contrary Texan finally opens his eyes.

Eric comes back from his breather, starts to quietly ease open the door to avoid startling Lisa, and then freezes in place when he hears the weak, scratchy voice inside the room drawling, “Come on now. Don’t cry on my account.”

Lisa laughs, her voice thick with tears, and replies, “You’re a jackass, Sonny Quinn.”

She lowers her forehead to Sonny’s, cupping his face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with emotion.

Eric silently closes the door. He shoots the rest of the team a text telling them not to enter the room, on the pretext that Davis is finally sleeping and shouldn’t be disturbed.

Walking away, he can’t quite keep the small, relieved smile off his face.

But if anyone asks, he never saw or heard a goddamn thing.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Take My Hand (Into the Frying Pan)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22471858) by [lostinanotherworld24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinanotherworld24/pseuds/lostinanotherworld24)




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